Many manufacturing and assembly facilities are designed to provide lean manufacturing practices which minimize movement, material requirements, waste and optimize factory floor utilization in order to perform the same or additional tasks while saving costs. Such facilities include several work areas or cells where various manufacturing and/or assembly operations (i.e. production operations) are performed by operators. In order to provide lean manufacturing practices, many of the work cells are arranged in either a substantially “L” or “U” shaped configuration.
Manufacturing and assembly facilities frequently utilize workbenches for performing production operations. Referring to FIG. 1, a first workbench 10 is shown located at an approximately 90 degree orientation relative to a second workbench 12 to form an “L” shaped configuration. An exemplary workflow is indicated by first 14 and second 16 arrows which correspond to the orientation of the first 10 and second 12 workbenches. In particular, the first arrow 14 depicts a direction of a sequence of production operations that progresses in a first direction on the first workbench 10 and then changes direction by approximately 90 degrees and continues in a second direction on the second workbench 12.
Materials used in production operations, such as small parts or assemblies, are typically located in a rear portion 18 of the workbenches 10,12 away from first 20 and second 22 operators. Thus, accessibility to the materials (indicated by arrow 30) is difficult for either operator 20,22 due to the location of the small parts or assemblies on the workbenches 10,12. In addition, replenishment of material by material handlers directly on the rear portion 18 of each workbench 10,12 (indicated by arrow 32) results in a disruption of production operations.
Moreover, due to the orientation of the first 10 and second 12 workbenches, an empty space 24 is formed adjacent to first 26 and second 28 ends of the first 10 and second 12 workbenches, respectively. Due to its location, the space 24 cannot be used as part of production operations, thus resulting in unusable factory floor space. Further, the amount of unusable factory floor space is doubled if a configuration is used wherein three workbenches are arranged in a “U” shape thus forming two unusable spaces 24.